Steve Weber’s Take on the North Korea Situation

Of all the potential flash points around the world these days, none are more worrisome than North Korea. The Hermit Kingdom is a black box, and it’s exceedingly difficult to know what’s going on within its borders. A couple of things, however, are clear: its nuclear and ballistic missile capabilities are improving, and the mutual bellicosity between Kim Jong-un and Donald Trump are making a bad situation worse.

Evaluating the objective risk of war is thus difficult, but UC Berkeley political science and information professor Steven Weber has a better vantage on the situation than most. Weber is a past consultant to the U.S. Commission on National Security in the 21st Century, a former director of Berkeley’s Institute of International Studies, and a former academic fellow with the Council on Foreign Relations. He spends quite a bit of time these days thinking about North Korea and the various scenarios that may play out. He also prefaces any discussion of the topic with a caveat: he doesn’t have a security clearance, so all his opinions are based on unclassified material and press coverage....